Fragile Safety Blanket

Thoughts after watching a few moments of last night’s Q&A between Richard Dawkins and Cardinal Pell.

I concede that religion has motivated some people to do good things, and has motivated some people who were tempted to do bad things not to do bad things. So never let it be said that its impact on the world is wholly negative. There’s more to the history of religion than just the wars and discrimination.

It does worry me, though, when people argue that without religion they’d be completely unable to function as civilised human beings. Good thing it’s there to keep them going, but… that’s a fragile safety blanket.

Here’s hoping that if those people lose their faith they can still find a reason not to go completely off the rails. I choose to have faith in their humanity that they can.